


Down in the Undergrowth

by burglebezzlement



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Camping, Corpse Flower, F/F, Feathered dinosaurs, Hiking, Mountains, Tahani is seriously out of her element
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 00:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9408509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Michael sends Eleanor into the wilderness to search for a door. Tahani volunteers to join her. Because Eleanor’s a bad person. She’ll need Tahani’s help. Won’t she?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as either canon-departure just after S1E9, or alternatively, as something that takes place in The Good Place 2.0 after things have played out for a bit and Eleanor's secret has been exposed.

The Good Place has been under siege from the legions of Hell for three weeks when Michael sends Eleanor and Tahani into the wilderness to look for the back door.

“It’s an old Architect’s legend,” Michael says. “They used to say you’d know when you saw it. Well, an Architect would anyway, I know you humans can’t see in nine dimensions, but….” He trails off.

“Anything I can do,” Eleanor says. “I mean it. Anything.”

“Oh, thank you, Eleanor,” he says, like Eleanor isn’t even Bad Eleanor. Fake Eleanor. Tahani hasn’t been calling her that, not since Chidi took them all aside and asked them not to (“It’s bad for Eleanor’s work here”), but they all _know_. 

“I’ll go too,” Tahani says. It’s a stupid impulse but the words are out of her mouth and she’s not taking them back. “I’m sure Eleanor would like company.” 

What she means is: Eleanor needs someone who belongs in the Good Place to help her. Michael knows that. Surely he does.

* * *

Tahani’s expecting their tour through the Good Place to be a short walk. A manicured experience, like the time she staged a charity gala in the garden of one of the estates used in a BBC period drama. Instead, the Good Place sprawls out beyond the mountains, out to the sea, an unexplored wilderness.

When she was alive, Tahani had zero interest in camping, even the glamorous sort with premium yurts that her dear friend Gwyneth used to recommend, bless her little hippie heart. Now — after life — Tahani has even less interest in being outside, with dirt and poor bathing opportunities. 

Janet still shows up when they call her, but Michael’s asked them not to call her often. The resources of the Good Place are stretched thin, defending the town against the attacks from the other side. It makes Tahani feel like they’re on their own out here. Carrying an actual tent. An actual canvas tent, not even a sleek nylon tent like the sort Tahani used to see in adverts for outdoor goods stores. 

It’s the Cheryl Strayed experience Tahani never wanted.

* * *

_You’re the good person_ , Tahani reminds herself, on their second day of searching, when they stumble across an enormous flower with fleshy petals that smell like rotten meat. _You’re the one who’s supposed to be here._

Eleanor stoops down to study it — getting closer than Tahani’s willing to get. 

“Janet?” Tahani’s sure Michael wouldn’t mind her calling Janet away for just a moment. Especially when there’s clear evidence of an incursion of hellspawn.

“Yes?” Janet’s there instantly, standing behind Eleanor. Her hair is pulled back into its usual ponytail, but instead of the drab brown, it’s turned a strangely brilliant orange.

“This — rotting meat flower,” Tahani says. “Can you please inform Michael we’ve found another incursion from the Bad Place?”

“Ah!” Janet smiles. “ _Amorphophallus titanum_. It was the dearest wish of Gunnar Jorgensen that he be able to see the majestic corpse flower in bloom.”

“Wait.” Tahani takes a step back. “You’re saying this thing _belongs here_?”

“Absotively posilutely.” Janet beams at them. “Michael’s given my interaction program a positivity upgrade! Isn’t that flower beautiful?”

“Gunnar is weird,” Eleanor says, looking at the disgusting flower with a meditative expression on her face. “Since you’re here, how’s everyone doing, Janet?”

“Just terrific,” Janet says. The smile doesn’t move from her face. “Really really good. We’ve got the invasion of ice cream shops down to a manageable level, and the swelling’s really going down from where the scorpion duck bit Chidi on the face!”

Eleanor winces, like she’s sorry she asked.

* * *

“What was your fondest dream?”

Tahani’s ducking under yet another branch when Eleanor asks, so she’s not sure she heard correctly. “Beg pardon?”

“If the big stinky flower was Gunnar’s,” Eleanor says. Her hair’s pulled back, and Tahani is simultaneously disapproving (so _plain_ with Eleanor’s bone structure) and envious (Eleanor, unlike Tahani, has no leaves or sticks caught in her hair). “What was yours?”

Tahani thinks about it while they walk on. “I don’t know,” she says, finally.

It’s a lie. She does know. But unlike Gunnar, her dream can’t be achieved in the Good Place, because wherever her parents ended up after their deaths, it’s not here.

* * *

That night, they make camp in a clearing. There’s a natural hot spring, like the clearing was intended to be the perfect place to pitch a tent. Tahani makes Eleanor look away while she climbs in. The water’s soft against her skin, and Tahani sighs in relief. 

“Your hair’s a mess,” Eleanor says from beside their tent. 

Eleanor's taking off the boots Janet gave her. The boots came with big thick ugly socks, which Tahani so far has refused to wear but is now rethinking, given the way her feet sting in the hot water. 

“My hair’s just too easy to style,” Tahani says. “It takes on any shape you ask it to. It’s a curse, really.”

Eleanor rolls her eyes. Tahani decides to ignore her.

After Tahani gets out of the hot spring, wrapped in a camping towel, she lets Eleanor take a comb and work through her hair, separating the snarls and working them out. It’s strange to have Eleanor this close, but the feeling of her hands in Tahani’s hair and the gentle pull of the comb is soothing. Tahani can feel the warmth of Eleanor behind her, by her. She hasn’t had someone so close to her since she came to the Good Place. 

Tahani sleeps soundly for the first time since Michael sent them into the wilderness.

* * *

Tahani never worried much about science while she was alive. It’s like she told Neal DeGrasse Tyson at one of her galas: the scientists can keep working on their science-y things, and she’ll keep raising money for sick kids and refugees.

But now she finds herself wondering. What is this place? Why does it have an instruction manual? And why would you have a backdoor that even the Architect wouldn’t know about? 

In her low moments, Tahani wonders if Michael was just sending Eleanor off to get her out of the village.

* * *

The Good Place’s weather restrictions get taken off because of an incursion of demonic Dachshunds, their tiny hell-feet tripping over the weather generators, and it starts to rain, and rain, and rain, and Tahani’s hair goes _frizzy_ which didn’t happen back on Earth, even that time she went to Queensland during the rainy season to help raise awareness for the rainforests. 

Tahani hopes she never has to find out what her version of the Bad Place looks like, but right now, she has a sneaking suspicion it’d involve an endless hike through rain that won’t shut off.

“Let’s find where the rain is coming from,” Tahani says. She’s sitting on a boulder next to Eleanor, in the rain. “Let’s find out and destroy it.”

Eleanor hands her a collapsible camping cup full of hot coffee. “That bad?”

She sounds sympathetic. Eleanor’s not supposed to be sympathetic. She’s supposed to be the bad one.

“Let’s get going,” Tahani says, and burns her tongue on the coffee trying to swallow it down.

* * *

Apparently the injury-protection routines aren’t working right, because Tahani gets a blister on her foot. Not just a sore spot — an actual blister. Horrifying.

They’re checking out the mountains. First they did the coastlines, and now they’re going inland, and the top of a mountain seems like as good a place as any. The sort of place the real Jianyu might meditate, Tahani thinks, and she wonders, again, what he’d be like. Michael knows that Jason isn’t Jianyu now, but they’ve been at war with the Bad Place; there’s no time there to worry about Tahani’s soulmate in all that.

Tahani finds herself wondering, as she and Eleanor scramble up an uneven, rocky path to the mountain’s summit. Would Jianyu have been what she expects? Maybe he’d come to Heaven with a lifetime of talk saved, all of it for her. 

Or maybe he would have been an even worse soulmate than Jason.

* * *

Once the weather generators get reset, the views from the mountain peaks are glorious. Climbing the mountains, seeing the sweep of the land to the sea — it must be someone’s dearest wish, even if it isn’t Tahani’s. 

After they descend the far side of the mountains, back to the sea, they find a beach made of rounded, fist-sized rocks instead of sand. Every rock looks like a face.

There’s nobody Tahani knew on the beach, as far as she can tell. Her parents aren’t there. There’s no Kamilah.

“This is seriously creepy,” Eleanor says, looking down at the stones under her feet, which stare vacantly back up at her.

Tahani shakes her head. “I don’t think it’s an incursion from the Bad Place. This looks like it’s been here forever.”

“Forever and creepy,” Eleanor says. They leave the beach for a little shoreline path, lined in ferns, and a mile or so on, Eleanor shakes her head. “Some of the people in the Good Place have seriously weird heart’s desires.”

Tahani can’t disagree.

* * *

Tahani finds herself watching Eleanor, and wondering. It’s like Tahani told her good friend Taylor Swift: sometimes you’ve got a blank space and you want to write their name down, see what happens. Tay stole that for a lyric, but of course Tahani didn’t mind; you want to help your friends out, if you can.

Eleanor, though. She’s not a foe and she’s not quite a friend. Neither flesh nor fish nor good red herring.

* * *

Further down the coast, they find an obsidian pyramid, surrounded by low, fallen walls. They explore a little, looking for the door, but the shadows between the walls are deep, and if there is a way into the pyramid, it’s well-hidden. They camp in the shadow of the pyramid that night. 

The next morning, they find a dock, with a boat. There’s a low island just over the horizon, beyond the water. 

They stand and look at the boat for a while, and then Eleanor shrugs. “It’s out of the ordinary, right?”

“Maybe,” Tahani says. 

Tahani’s been boating before, on a sailboat, but it’s easy enough to figure out the petrol engine on this boat and cross the channel to the island. There’s another dock at the other side, and Eleanor helps Tahani tie up.

The island is overgrown, with broad-leafed plants under tall, silent trees. Tahani stumbles over a root and Eleanor catches her, holding on a moment longer than she needs to before Tahani brushes her hands away.

“Thanks,” Tahani says.

“Don’t thank me yet.” Eleanor’s looking at something. “I think — I think I know why this is an island.”

Tahani turns to look where Eleanor’s pointing, and there they are — several little creatures covered in feathers in brilliant shades of green and brassy brown. Not birds, because they’ve got mouths with the most precious little teeth. Dinosaurs?

They’re looking up at Tahani, bobbing their heads, and Tahani drops to her knees and holds her hand out to them.

They’re _adorable_. If Tahani were alive, she would be organizing a gala to protect them right this minute.

“Hello, little friends,” Tahani says, ruffling the feathers of one of the smaller ones. It bares its teeth at her in what looks like a grin, and presses closer to her hand, letting her stroke the feathers on its crest. 

“They’re like Big Bird with teeth.” Eleanor’s voice is getting panicked. “And there’s — seriously, Tahani, we have to get out of here!”

Tahani keeps stroking the small dinosaur, but she looks up to see a dinosaur that’s much, much bigger. House-sized, maybe, if the house you’re talking about is the one Good Eleanor is now living in. It’s hard to tell, because its brown and black barred feathers are fluffed up, and there are bright red feathers around its eyes, rising up to make its eyes look enormous. And red.

“Oh, aren’t you beautiful,” Tahani says. The dinosaur is majestic. Lovely.

“Yes, and what big teeth it has,” Eleanor says. She’s being abnormally still, for Eleanor.

“It can’t hurt us,” Tahani says, bending back down to her tiny, feathered friend. “We’re already dead.”

“Tahani. _The injury prevention routines are offline_. Do you want to find out what happens if you get chomped on by a dinosaur when the injury prevention routines are out? Because I do not.”

Tahani freezes. She can still feel the ache of the old, still-healing blisters on her feet. 

“It’s been lovely to see you all we really must do this again,” Tahani says, to the tiny dinosaurs, and then she and Eleanor are both _running_ , flat out, the way Tahani never did on Earth, her lungs burning as she tries to keep her footing on the path.

* * *

Once they’re back on the mainland, they tie up the boat and keep walking. Tahani’s watching the woods more closely than she did before, but there’s no dinosaurs, only the sudden flutter of birds as they walk by.

They make camp that night along a shady stream, setting up the canvas tent together in practiced unison. Tahani’s used to it now. The sound of the hammer as Eleanor hammers in the tent stakes, the weight of the crumpled canvas in her arms.

She takes a quick swim before bed, in the cold water of the stream, and wonders what her parents and Kamilah could think if they could see her. Tahani, the dull sister, the failure of a daughter, meeting real dinosaurs and skinny-dipping in a stream. Exploring an uncharted world.

They wouldn’t believe it, Tahani decides, and lets her feet bob up to the surface while she floats on her back.

* * *

Sometime in the night, the weather control system goes offline again, and there’s a great thunderstorm, booming with thunder and bursting with rain. Tahani wakes to find ankle-deep water running through their tent. She calls for Janet, but whatever’s gone wrong to lead to a flood in the Good Place, it also means Janet’s not coming. 

Tahani gets Eleanor up and they stumble up the slope just before the tent’s washed away.

“I give up,” Eleanor says.

They don’t have lights, but Tahani can see Eleanor’s face in the flashes of the lightning. Her face is wet, and Tahani can’t tell if she’s crying or if it’s the rain. 

“Oh,” Tahani says, helplessly, trying to find the right words. They’re both soaked through, down in the mud beneath the lashing trees.

“I’m not a good person,” Eleanor says. “I know it. I should just give up. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

“Maybe someone’s dearest dream was a thunderstorm,” Tahani says.

The next flash of lightning tells her that Eleanor’s not convinced.

“Come here,” Tahani says. She crawls over to Eleanor and puts her arm around her. Her skin is warm under Tahani’s hands.

Eleanor sniffles and leans into Tahani, and they stay like that, watching the engorged stream wash away the rest of their things.

“I guess we’re here for the night,” Tahani says, turning to look at Eleanor, and Eleanor turns to look at her and they’re so close that Tahani leans in without thinking about it.

Eleanor doesn’t kiss like she’s a bad girl.

She kisses like she’s desperate. Like she’s afraid, like Tahani might melt away under her hands and leave her with only this moment to remember her by. 

They sink to the ground, together, and above them the storm rages and crackles.

* * *

The next morning, Janet finally appears. Tahani asks her what’s happening back at the village, but she doesn’t tell them much. Just that the latest incursion of hellspawn has been repelled, whatever that means.

She resets their clothing and their tent and Tahani’s blisters.

Everything’s reset, in fact, except what happened between them. Eleanor keeps glancing over at Tahani and looking away, and Tahani can’t quite meet her eyes. They pack up the resurrected campsite, working as a team but not talking, not connecting, except when their hands meet on the folded canvas of the tent and Eleanor takes a short breath in.

Tahani stands, frozen, and then Eleanor takes the tent from her and turns away and the moment breaks.

* * *

That afternoon, they find their way to a waterfall. Standing by the base of the waterfall, with plumes of mist flowing around him, is a man.

Tahani knows, instantly, that he’s not from the village. You plan enough parties with a limited guest pool, you get to know every single one of your potential guests by sight. But she doesn’t know who this man is until he turns around and Eleanor takes in a breath.

“Doug,” Eleanor says, and then she’s slinging her pack to the ground and running over the rocks to him.

Tahani picks up Eleanor’s pack and follows behind, more slowly, watching while Eleanor gets the man’s attention. The way they’re standing — at first Tahani thought he was someone Eleanor knew back on Earth, but their body stance is very first-cocktail-party-meeting, not awkward-family-reunion. Tahani’s observed enough of both to be an expert.

“So you have to be the door,” Eleanor’s saying, once Tahani gets close enough to hear. “Aren’t you?”

Tahani drops both packs to the ground and stands in the stance that means _introduce me_.

Eleanor doesn’t speak Tahani fluently, though, so she stops talking and stares at the man, waiting for his response.

The man smiles. “How is Michael?”

“Pardon me,” Tahani says, cooly. “Tahani Al-Jamil. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“This is Doug Forcett,” Eleanor says, like that should mean something to Tahani. “From Michael’s wall? He got everything 92% right?”

“92% of what?” Tahani asks.

Eleanor waves her arms. “All of this! The Good Place! What happens! All this stuff!”

“Actually, it was more that Michael was 8% wrong,” Doug says.

“Oh, please, do explain,” Tahani says. She knows she’s being rude. Right now, she doesn’t care.

“Michael, all the Architects from both sides — they all assume that humans are frozen when they die, that they can’t change.” Doug shrugs. “Have you ever seen a human try to be happy with what they have for even a year? It’s impossible. We love change. We need to grow. And we need one another.”

It sounds like self-help-book nonsense to Tahani. “How is any of this something I need?”

Doug looks at her, really looks at her, and Tahani squirms. Janet reset her this morning, but she’s still wearing clunky boots, and those _horrid_ socks, and she’s looped her hair back in a ponytail to keep it away from the sticks and leaves of the forest… really, if it weren’t for her flawless skin and lovely figure, she’d be _hideous_. 

“When I look at you right now, I don’t see someone who’s living a static afterlife,” Doug says. “I see someone who figured some things out about herself.”

“Great,” Eleanor says, flatly. “So we’re getting in touch with our inner ya-yas or whatever. What does that mean for the door? Where is it?”

Doug smiles. “The door was within you all along.”

“What? That’s forking bullshirt, man.”

“It’s still true.” Doug spreads his hands.

“So what are we supposed to tell Michael?” Tahani asks.

“Tell him this universe is unfolding as it was meant to,” Doug says.

And then he melts away, into the mist surrounding the waterfall.

* * *

Eleanor spends half an hour tearing the area around the waterfall apart, rock by rock, until she finally gives up and sits down beside Tahani. 

Tahani’s taken off her shoes and her ugly socks, and she’s letting her feet rest in the cool water of the pool at the base of the waterfall. It is lovely here, if she ignores all the dirt and leaves and all the _outdoors_ of it all.

Eleanor doesn’t say anything at first.

“How are you so calm?” she asks, finally. “I was supposed to do good person stuff out here. I was supposed to help Michael. And now we’re going back with nothing.”

“I think we did get something,” Tahani says.

“What? What did we get?”

Tahani’s not sure about this. But she doesn’t think it’s a coincidence Doug appeared when he did.

“I think we figured something out about why we’re here,” Tahani says.

“What, to solve riddles?”

“To _change_ ,” Tahani says.

Eleanor doesn’t say anything at first. She’s watching the mist swirling from the waterfall. Finally, she sits down, beside Tahani, and pulls off her shoes and socks. She rolls her horrible khaki trousers up to her knees and puts her feet in the water beside Tahani’s.

Tahani pushes her foot into the current, and Eleanor’s foot finds hers. They sit there, letting their feet touch beneath the water.

“So that’s the big revelation,” Eleanor says. “After all of this. Humans change.”

Tahani puts her arm around Eleanor and pulls her close. Eleanor lets her head fall on Tahani’s shoulder, and Tahani turns towards her. 

“We change,” she says, into Eleanor’s hair, which smells like sweat and Eleanor. “And we learn to be with one another.”


End file.
